


In Vivid Color

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, pre-season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 15:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16558145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He should have known, even back then, that his life would be forever changed.





	In Vivid Color

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLaw/gifts).



From the moment that his palm made contact to skin, in the belly of that churning, white-hot pit of Hell, from the moment that Castiel reached into the endless trenches of writhing black smoke and licking fire to grab a man, a mere human who felt like a nothing but a ragdoll in his grasp, he should have known, even back then, that his life would be forever changed by it.

Dean Winchester, for all intents and purposes, was not a substantial being by his physical attributes alone. He wasn’t old or wise or braver than his father before him had been. He wasn’t a strong-willed human who could withstand the perils of tortured reality forever, for longer, even, than just a short three decades of agony. Pius, Castiel would not have described him as when he met him—a small and sniveling thing, shaking so hard that Castiel had wondered if he’d ever stop. Soul snapped into body underground, gasping and retching and struggling in a way that was all-too-human. All too familiar, to clamber about in a dazed confusion that Cas had been told was customary for a human who had met an angel.

But that sort of thing—the dragging a soul from hell thing, the saving the pathetic creature who started the apocalypse thing—it wasn’t commonplace, not by any sense of the word. It wasn’t normal, and he never could figure out which of his superiors had originally suggested it. God, having left them, could not have passed the word down, but maybe it was fate. Maybe the questions would never be answered, maybe he would never truly comprehend how his life had become so intrinsically coiled together with the Winchesters’, but those were the moments that got the ball rolling. Those strange, remarkably forward-thinking decisions that had propelled him with growing momentum towards the reality that he soon lived day by day.

Dean Winchester wasn’t a prophet, and he couldn’t see angels in their true forms without sustaining injury. When Castiel attempted to communicate with him for the very first time, he was taken aback by just how regular, disappointing, and mundane he really was. Unsubstantial, lackluster. Castiel grew frustrated with him, tired too soon with a toy that wouldn’t behave the way that he wanted it to. He pawed at Dean as a housecat might paw at a dying mouse. He wanted more, and he pushed. And he never truly understood what he was pushing for. 

Because Dean would break only harder, and he was already so broken. He was a moving, breathing thing without substance. He was a facade of a person heaving broken breaths from broken lungs, rising each day and going about the motions of a nothing life, with no true purpose to compel him. Dean Winchester was not his brother, powered by his growing obsession. Dean Winchester, by all means, if he wanted to, could slip into the skin of a normal human being and live a life absent of the endless struggle that he curiously pursued.

And Castiel, despite his best efforts, was intrigued. He couldn’t deny that fact, couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t stop himself from hoping each time that he met the man that he’d live up to the expectations that Castiel had begun to carry privately in his heart. He watched Dean struggle and toil as a human might watch an ant under a magnifying glass. He watched him scurry about, watched him cry and fight, and pretend that there was any reason for any of it.

And sometimes, Dean Winchester was funny. Many times, he made jokes. He made references that Castiel didn’t understand. He made remarks that should have been cutting, he knew, if only he could ever hope to grasp them. He listened to loud rock music. He ate food that clogged his arteries and drained whatever energy he should have had left. He was a normal human, but he was empty inside. Castiel could hear the perpetual beating of his heart, the stammering of his blood warm and alive through his veins. He could hear him breathing, and laughing that humorless laugh. He could see the soft and sometimes worried looks that he would send at an unwitting Sam, and he would wonder about him. He didn’t understand it. He’d taken refuge in the body of a man who prayed for bigger things. Who wanted to be part of something. He was accustomed to humans who quaked in his presence, humans who would give anything for divine intervention, even if they happened to understand exactly what that meant. 

Humans so willing to worship a deity were plentiful. Humans who would give their entire existence for a world that would never know them, never understand them, never give them even just the smallest hint of compassion until they proved their worth boundlessly—

Humans like Dean Winchester, he learned eventually, were a whole lot harder to find. 

Dean was made of soft skin wrapped like velvet over a rippling, curved and sturdy frame of firm, finely-tuned muscle. He was comprised of water, flesh, blood, and bone. He was a fragile thing that could be pulled apart and drained out. Human life was brief and tragically commonplace. Castiel found himself sometimes counting the years, the days, the moments when billions would die. He’d wonder how many moments he’d lingered in heaven, how quickly a human existence could begin and abruptly be snuffed out, before he’d finished even one task. Dean Winchester had been alive for thirty or so of those. Castiel wasn’t sure what he could do in heaven in thirty years. Compared to his vast, limitless existence, it felt like not even enough time to sit down and drink a warm mug of a morning human beverage.

But Dean was alive then, tall and chiseled, smiling and laughing and making those dry jokes. He was young and deceptively beautiful. He reminded Castiel, often, of the skin that demons would drape themselves in. Behind that mask of youthly beauty, there was something darker existing inside. There was a hovel of darkness residing inside of him, spreading like a slow sickness through veins and lungs and that frantic human heart. Dean Winchester was healthy and safe from Hell, maybe, but he’d taken it with him inside. He’d been carried out grasping desperate and tight to the trauma that now rested just under his skin. Castiel could smell it like the copper of fresh human blood. He could see it, like the outline of his own handprint raised in a burn scar on Dean’s flesh. He knew that Dean was a broken thing, remended many, many times. He knew that he was a ticking time bomb, and that the apocalypse might be the end of him. 

The angels weren’t in the business of worrying about the life of one human over the lives of many others, especially, they’d noted, the life of the sole human who broke the first seal. That obligation fell instead onto Castiel, for whatever reason, and he’d never given himself the opportunity to consider if perhaps he was just weak-willed enough to fall for the charms and guiles of such a man, or if Dean Winchester was simply so surprisingly prepossessing that any angel in his place would have become wholly invested in his plight as well.

Castiel himself had seen Hell, and he hadn’t understood what to make of it. He hadn’t known how he would feel existing there as long as Dean had, as long as a being might need to in order to be churned out as a demon. He didn’t like thinking about it, thought that perhaps it was treason to even consider it—pity, for a damned soul and a demon of all things. For a handsome, broken man who bartered with a devil to save his younger brother’s life. For the righteous man who started the apocalypse, for a feeble human who was nothing more than an ant trudging up the sandhill of its colony, to someone like Castiel who had taken breaths longer than half of the human population had even been in existence. 

Castiel didn’t understand why humans cared about each other. He didn’t know what it meant to mourn or to cry. He knew betrayal and loyalty. He felt the limited spectrum of emotion that his father had crafted him to feel. But he didn’t understand, suddenly, the skittering warmth that washed over him when he caught himself staring at Dean Winchester. He didn’t know why sometimes he felt drawn to him like a magnet, like flies to rotting fruit. He didn’t know where the aching hollow that tore through his insides originated from, why it felt better, suddenly, when his resolve would break and he would find himself making needless trips to check up on the angel’s new golden human. 

Who, he would remind himself, should not have been a special human at all. 

Breakable skin, tender bones. A heart that could be pulverized easily under a fist, or the hulking, unforgiving steel of a human automobile. A human could be killed in so many conceivable ways. A human would die naturally so soon that he wondered if this interest of his was truly akin to a person becoming transfixed on a single ant of a whole colony. Dean Winchester would be here, then gone, in less time than Castiel felt that he could even blink. He’d be replaced by more unsubstantial humans. He’d be forgotten, lost to history, anonymous and faded, burning perhaps in Hell for another eternity. Or escaping instead to the mysterious oasis of heaven, if perhaps his good deeds could make up for all of the bad things that he’s done.

But Castiel finds, on most days, that he’d like to spend as much time with Dean Winchester as possible. It becomes an in-joke amount some of his peers that he’s developed a soft spot for the man. Castiel, of all angels, stony and often unreachable. Castiel, who should have known better and been better, bending at the knee on the whim of nothing but an already-rotting creature that he’d outlive by many, many centuries after this silly fixation finally comes to an end.

Castiel sees exotic birds sitting in cages in pet stores. He sees fish with many-colored scales, with fat, overfed bodies rising to the surface of pond water to accept offers of food from human fingers. He sees petting zoos and strays coaxed into parked cars. He watches advertisements on the television about animal shelters and nature reserves. He wonders if his father could have comprehended that his great Earthly beasts could be tamed so easily by a human hand. He wonders if his father knew, even centuries and centuries ago, that Castiel himself could be domesticated just as easily, if only he could find himself in the wavelength of a human so willing to do it.

He doesn’t know if Dean has charmed him purposefully or not. He doesn’t know if Dean even fully understands the effect that he has on other beings. His reviews among Castiel’s peers are mixed at best, and his brother is so wholly unpopular that Castiel almost feels ashamed at times that he’s not a little bit nicer to him to make up for it. Sam Winchester was the only believer among them at first, and even now, in the face of indisputable proof, Dean scoffs at the mere idea of a divine creator who must have conjured all of this from nothing. 

Castiel can’t say that he blames him, considering all that he’s lived through. His own resolve is shaken greatly by the disarray that his father has left their realm in. It’s a chaotic scrambling for power, at best. It’s a confusing, aimless existence, struggling desperately to find the right path when they’ve been given so little free will and empathy to make the right calls. He doesn’t know why his father would create him to feel less, to be less than a human. And he doesn’t know why his father’s more beloved offspring were made to suffer so terribly. 

Dean seems to think that his father just doesn’t care about them anymore, that he’s a sadist, at best, and a monster at the absolute worst.

Anymore, Castiel isn’t sure if he disagrees with him. 

But this leaves Castiel in a precarious position. He’s faced with a fork in the proverbial road of his journey. He’s never existed on a longer leash than he does right now. He’s never been given the option to carve his own path instead of just following orders.

And, reliably, he’s weak. He’s lost. He can’t do anything completely on his own.

He leans on the strongest shoulder that he can find—Dean Winchester’s, against his will. Castiel, lost and fatherless and wholly abandoned, decides that instead of forging his own path, he’ll follow in the footsteps of a man who isn’t nearly strong enough to support even himself. 

And their first time together, it’s sacrilegious in every sense of the word. They’re tucked away in a motel room that’s bright and garish and lacking the ambient low gold lighting of the bars that often make Dean look as though he’s a Greek god, of sorts, crafted from stone. Here, in the stale stink of cigarettes and the whiskey on Dean’s breath, curled together and moving in tandem on scratchy sheets that Castiel suspects haven’t been cleaned properly by the staff. Castiel feels further from his father than he’s ever felt in his life. He feels that holy connection tethered by Dean’s big hands on his skin, and he feels Jimmy too—hidden somewhere inside of him, casting his eyes and his thoughts and his ever-present spirit far away out of respect, for… something. For the mess of an angel that Castiel is now. The derelict, abandoned by his father. The disappointment of a son that surely doesn’t even deserve his wings anymore. 

Castiel scrambles, and he makes all of the decisions that he thinks must be the wrong ones. He sleeps with Dean and he kisses him back, because it tastes like whiskey, and it hurts, when Dean presses inside of him. It hurts and he feels like his father would hate knowing that he’d lowered himself down, that he took a knee for a human and a host who refused to open himself up to Michael, of all humans. God’s biggest disappointment tucked in a dark, shady motel room with God’s forgotten son. Castiel knows human poetry, he knows of their artwork, their monuments erected in his father’s honor. He knows the most beautiful prose that human beings have to offer, their music, their words, their paintings and sculptures and their masterpieces raised to honor his father and his brothers’ and sisters’ image. But none of this, nothing that he’s seen or heard or read before—none of it could prepare him for the smooth warmth of Dean Winchester’s kiss. The subtle slope of his hard muscles, the narrow dip of his waist, the glassy flicker of light in his wet eyes and the soft, tentative, drunken way that he presses his lips to Castiel’s. 

And he feels it then—a glimmer of something. An inkling of feeling twitching and aching in the deepest depths of his chest. It isn’t anger or sadness or betrayal. It isn’t a happiness that makes him laugh like Dean often laughs. But he doesn’t know exactly what it is. He won’t understand what this feeling represents for a very, very long time.

But it hurts after that, to look at Dean. It hurts to feel him slipping further and further away.

And it hurts to watch him go, to see him dragged back so many times.

He won’t find a name for this emotion for a very, very long time. It will take even longer to admit it to himself, and longer, even still, to say the words out loud to Dean.

The months drag on, become years. They age and they die, and they’re brought back to a world that’s forever on the brink of destruction. Torn apart many times, made whole again, and again, and again. 

He changes to a person who he barely recognizes anymore.

But still, that feeling persists. 

But still, even after all of this time, he can’t stop himself from falling harder and harder into the depths of this terrible, aching feeling.

This feeling that he learns, eventually, is love. 


End file.
